Franklin by Davidson Butler

Author:Davidson Butler [Davidson Butler]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography/Historical
ISBN: 9781612307954
Publisher: New Word City, Inc.
Published: 2014-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

When Franklin reached England in December 1764, he found himself embroiled in an unexpected political uproar. After spending more than £200 million to defeat France in the Seven Years War, the British government was in debt. With people complaining about taxes, British politicians hesitated to impose more taxes in England, Scotland, or Ireland.

It cost the British a lot of money to maintain an army in America to protect residents, and parliament decided to make Americans pay for this. When Franklin arrived, he found government preparing to pass a Stamp Act for America. All legal documents, marriage licenses, wills, contracts, as well as newspapers and other items, would be required to carry a Royal stamp, which the government would sell. A similar law was in place in England.

Franklin and three other Americans went to see George Grenville, leader of the British cabinet, called the prime minister, to argue against the law, warning Americans would resent it. They did not believe parliament had a right to tax people in the colonies, because they had no representatives in parliament. But Grenville presented the bill to parliament, where it passed with little debate. Franklin advised friends at home to be patient. He and other Americans in England would work to get the law repealed, but it might take time.

In America, almost every colony condemned the bill. In Virginia, Patrick Henry, a backwoods orator, arose in the House of Burgesses to thunder, “Caesar had his Brutus, Charles I his Cromwell, let George III profit from their example.” In Boston and New York, mobs rioted, destroying the houses of government officials and forcing commissioners who were to sell stamps to resign. A boycott of the stamps by all New Jersey lawyers meant no legal business could be conducted in the colony. When a barge arrived in New Jersey with a shipment of the stamps, Governor William Franklin refused to allow it to land and unload. His answer to the king, under whose grace he served, would be that he had received no clear instructions about the dispensation of the stamps. He practiced this justification in a letter to his father: “It seems to me that we might legally go on with business in the usual way, as much as if the stamps had never been sent or had been lost at sea, seeing that no commission or instructions have been sent to anybody.”

In Philadelphia, Franklin’s enemies spread word that he favored the Stamp Act and had helped the British government draft the law. A mob threatened to attack his house. Franklin heard the story from Deborah, in vivid letters. For nine days, she said, she was kept in “one contineued hurrey” by people urging her to flee with Sally to William’s home in Burlington, New Jersey. But other friends and relatives supported them. One of Deborah’s cousins arrived to tell her “more than twenty pepel” told him it was his duty to stay with her. She told him she was “pleased to receive civility from aney bodey.

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